She could see Poole backing out onto the balcony. She caught the grim smile on his face, his zombie eyes. He lowered his gun, grabbed hold of the railing, and jumped up onto the wall. As he turned to fire, their eyes met and he started laughing again. Then he lost his balance and began to teeter. His grin vanished, his face flushed with fear. Lena saw his gun drop onto the floor and then Poole disappeared.
She heard a woman scream. Heard glass shattering followed by a heavy thump. Sirens approaching in the distance.
Running out onto the balcony, she looked over the edge with Rhodes. By all appearances, Albert Poole, aka Nathan Good, wouldn’t be shedding any light on the case. He wouldn’t be answering many questions, or telling them who had hired him. What was left of his body was lying on the grass twelve stories down. And the ride hadn’t been very easy. It looked like he had hit the glass ceiling in the lobby and bounced off the steel beams into the front yard.
They rushed downstairs, Lena feeling the heat now. They raced through the lobby and onto the lawn. Washington was already outside, standing over Poole’s body and shaking his head.
“He was a war hero,” the vet was whispering. “A fucking war hero, for Christ’s sake. One of the guys who made it back and got treated like shit. It’s a disgrace. You hear me? It’s a fucking disgrace.”
Lena moved in and gazed at the body. The ground was soft from all the rain over the past month and Poole had sunk a good six inches into the soil. But as she studied his face-examined it from less than a foot away-she was overcome with a horrible feeling. She looked at Rhodes, who didn’t seem to understand. Cops were running up the sidewalk. People crowding in to gawk.
Lena flashed her badge at the cops. “You need to get these people out of here.” She glanced at Washington, then turned back. “Him, too.”
Rhodes nudged her. “What is it?” he whispered. “What’s wrong?”
“You said a doctor made the ID and called it in. Did you talk to him?”
Rhodes shook his head.
“Who brought this to you? Barrera or the sixth floor?”
“Chief Logan’s office,” he said. “Klinger came down while you were in the room with Tremell. He briefed us and gave me those photographs.”
She shook her head and felt the burn. The terror. Then she dug into Poole’s pocket and fished out the dead man’s keys.
“Come on,” she said. “Hurry.”
She led the way down to the garage, ripped the door open and peered through the darkness. There were too many cars. Too many SUVs. Too much gloom to fight through. She hit the clicker, disabling the car’s alarm, and turned when she heard the chirp. As her eyes locked in on Poole’s car, she knew that she was staring into the abyss again. Tasting its rotten fruit. It wasn’t a red Hummer. Instead, it was a ten-year-old Toyota Camry parked in the far corner.
Now a war hero was dead.
32
It was just before midnight. The marine layer had rolled in, low and thick and burying the City of Angels in the clouds. Rhodes was wheeling the Crown Vic back to Parker Center so that Lena could pick up her car. Forty-five miles an hour on the Hollywood Freeway. It felt like they were alone on the road. Just those occasional beams of light zipping by like UFOs, the sound dampened by the heavy steam.
“It’s my fault,” Lena whispered. “You were away. You didn’t know.”
“It’s not your fault or my fault. It’s Klinger’s.”
“I should’ve paid more attention,” she said. “I lost my focus.”
“Klinger did this, Lena. And he should pay for it.”
Lena slipped her hand into her pocket and wrapped it around the pack of cigarettes she bought Sunday night. She wouldn’t light one. She’d save that for later. It was enough just to know that they were there.
She turned and looked at Rhodes. “Klinger won’t pay for this, Stan. The chief won’t, either. That’s not the way it’ll work.”
“Then how the hell is it gonna work?”
She paused for a moment. She had spent the last three hours grappling with it. Seeing what happened for what it was and what it would be. They had searched Poole’s apartment and found things-medals, honors, remembrances. But it was the letters they recovered from his desk that told the real story and defined the man. Letters written by soldiers whom Poole had risked his own life to save. Letters from their wives and parents, their husbands and children. A diary that he’d started after a roadside bomb wounded more than a hundred civilians and Poole was the only one at the scene with medical experience. Poole had been a combat surgeon with enormous talent, but also a medic in the field. He was someone who gave it his all, but then buckled under the strain. Someone who had given, then given even more until he reached the point where he needed something back. But no one answered the call. No one lent him a helping hand. All they did was write scripts and feed him more pills.
Lena let the thought go, staring into the wall of fog but not seeing it.
“One of two things are going to happen,” she whispered from a place deep inside herself.
“What things?”
“They’re going to say that we cleared the case tonight. That we got our man. That Albert Poole was Nathan Good and everything ends with him. Poole will take the fall so there won’t be any reason to pursue Fontaine, or Justin Tremell, or whoever’s put the fix in with the chief and the DA. They’re gonna close the case, Stan. It’s either that or they’re gonna say that I’m the one who totally fucked things up. That I killed a war hero tonight without justification. A man who helped others and didn’t deserve to die. It’ll be one or the other or some combination of both. Either way, the chief can do whatever he wants to me now.”
Her voice faded into the muted sound of the Crown Vic cruising through the clouds. Floating in the dark mist. After a long moment, Rhodes broke the silence, his voice barely audible.
“Poole may have been a war hero, Lena. But we didn’t start shooting. He did. And Klinger probably knew enough about the guy to guess that he would.”
Lena didn’t say anything, even though she agreed that Klinger and Chief Logan had done their homework. The setup had been perfect. Barrera had warned her on the first call. She had known that something was coming all week. And when it finally did, she missed it. Now an innocent man, however troubled, was dead.
“What’s important,” she said, “is that you need to distance yourself from me.”
“That’s not gonna happen.”
“Yes, it is. You’re gonna keep your job and let me take the fall. And you’re gonna stay away from Klinger.”
Rhodes looked at her with those eyes of his. “Fuck you,” he said.
33
Nathan G. Cava crept up the stairs and moved silently down the hall until he reached the study When he peeked in, he saw Fontaine on the floor by the fireplace and damned himself for being ten minutes late.
The Beverly Hills doctor had just discovered that his cash stash was history.
Cava had to admit that the show was still pretty good. There was some crying going on-some fist pounding and weeping. Even some grunting and swearing, weak as it may have been. Still, he’d missed the big moment. The existential moment. The beat of all beats. He’d hoped to see the greedy little bastard move the rock away and peer into the darkness. He’d hoped to witness the moment when the man realized that there was only nothingness.
Fontaine crawled over to his desk and lifted himself onto the chair, still unaware that Cava was watching him from the doorway. He was cradling his head in his arms and feeling sorry for himself. His shirt was wrinkled and soaked through with sweat, his hair in disarray. After a good five minutes, Fontaine reached for the phone and dialed a number.